Originally published on November 15, 2008
In no particular order:
- If you’re a retailer, it’s a lazy way to buy wine. We should be offering a more interesting point of view than “as many wines from someone else’s list that I can get my hands on before they sell through the distributor.”
- If you’re a consumer, it’s also kind of lazy. That said, I know the wine world is confusing, sometimes almost deliberately so. So I understand that any list anywhere is helpful. But here’s a little trick…if you want the Mollydooker 2007 which made this year’s Top 10, you might not want to immediately run away from prior vintages just because they wasn’t on this year’s list. If you’re prepared to like a producer this year, chances are very good you’ll like the producer any year. And the main difference may just be that you don’t have to pay the “Wine Spectator Top 100 Premium” that always seems to crop up around this time of the year. Better to use the list as a jumping off point than the end-all-be-all that a lot of people make it.
- Little undercover wines that I love sometimes crop up on the list. This sucks because then the big stores snatch all the wine and I can’t get it anymore. I hate that..I really hate that.
- A big ranking can be the kiss of death for new, up-and-coming wines. Here’s why…Not only can I not get the wine, but most smaller stores can’t. This is because the big stores beat the distributors over the head to get as much of the wine as they can. In some states, the distributors slap big case deals on these wines, like a 25% discount on 10 cases. Little shops can’t (and many don’t want) to tie up the cash needed to buy 10 cases of an $80 wine, even if it does mean a 25% discount. So these wines end up at big stores with big discounts. Now this isn’t a bad thing for the consumer – everyone likes good wine for less money. But then the next vintage comes around…without the big rating, so the big stores don’t want to touch the wine now. And the little stores are now reluctant to buy the wine as well – because this year the wine is probably more expensive (thank you ratings!) and consumers expect it to cost what it cost last year…in the big stores with the big discount. And people that buy off of the Top 100 list aren’t even interested anymore. So what was once a nice up-and-coming wine is now struggling with all this baggage.
I could probably come up with more, but I don’t want to spend any more time thinking about this list than I already have.
Next up, an obligatory Thanksgiving wine list. Yes, they’re sort of annoying, but I’m a retailer… I have to do this!